Gunnar Myrdal's intellectual development as an institutional economist

To resolve these issues the author relied upon the major works of Myrdal as well as those of the American institutionalises. In addition, a personal interview was conducted with Gunnar Myrdal which focuged on aspects of his career which were not presented in Myrdal's published works.

One of the findings of this study concerns the basic characteristics of American institutionalism. These characteristics include: the vision of a reasonable society in which the common social will is expressed collectively, not through market forces; the optimistic belief that society can realize progress if it adopts technological (as opposed to institutional) means for solving its problems; a theory of social change which sees society resolving the inevitable conflict between technological and ceremonial forces through an instrumental valuing process, and a conception of the socioeconomic order which holds that the economy is submerged in. rather than separate from, a broader social order; that human behavior is culturally conditioned, often irrational; and that behavior usually occurs in response to noneconomic forces, especially the pursuit of security.

Other principal findings concern the course of Gunnar Myrdal's intellectual development. He was especially influenced by the Philosophy of Enlightenment, Mrs. Alva Myrdal, and the social problems he chose to analyze. Regarding these problems, Myrdal's early 1930's study of the population issue in Sweden (conducted with Mrs. Myrdal) and his study of race relations in the United States (1939-1942) were the two major studies which contributed to his developing a transdisciplinary perspective towards social problems.

Each of the conclusions of this dissertation provides an answer to one of the principal questions analyzed. First, Myrdal adopted a transdisciplinary approach for dealing with social issues because he was both able and willing to integrate the perspective offered by the related social sciences while developing his own epistemology. Secondly, Myrdal is not simply an institutionalist in the American tradition, for he has developed his own brand of institutionalism which serves as a valuable framework for contemporary social scientists to rely upon for analyzing social problems.